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I decided to take all the data from TLPD of maps played since the start of 2005 in pro BW (177 maps), and create an algorithm that would rank them based on number of games played, number of tournaments used in, when they were in their prime, their winrates in all-match ups, the amount of mirror match-ups played (essentially all data that can be extracted).
My intention here is to compile a list of maps that tournament organizers should consider, what maps are worth practicing on, etc.
The result is here:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3XzE80K.png)
All-time FiWiFaKi SC:BW Map Balance Power Ranking
1 Blue Storm 20.670
2 Tau Cross 18.142
3 Fighting Spirit 14.826
4 Circuit Breaker 11.952
5 Fantasy II 9.920
6 Destination 9.897
7 Neo Medusa 9.396
8 Colosseum II 8.781
9 Sin Peaks of Baekdu 7.545
10 Match Point 7.285
11 Luna 6.992
12 Katrina 6.942
13 La Mancha 6.623
14 Eye of the Storm 6.513
15 Heartbreak Ridge 6.474
16 Python 6.442
17 Arcadia 6.258
18 Neo Requiem 6.015
19 Nostalgia 6.008
20 Longinus 2 5.980
21 Troy 5.874
22 Athena 5.839
23 Zodiac 5.765
24 Blitz 5.759
25 Hitchhiker 5.707
26 Neo Bifrost 5.090
27 New Bloody Ridge 5.023
28 Monty Hall 4.882
29 Return of the King 4.867
30 Byzantium 2 4.688
31 Sin Chupung-Ryeong 4.670
32 Into the Darkness 2 4.640
33 Polaris Rhapsody 4.443
34 Rush Hour 3 4.409
35 Odd-Eye 2 4.292
36 Triathlon 4.262
37 R-Point 4.245
38 Neo Forte 4.208
39 Grand Line SE 4.059
40 Plasma 4.048
41 Benzene 3.889
42 815 III 3.841
43 Great Barrier Reef 3.798
44 Outsider 3.713
45 Monte Cristo 3.694
46 Neo Guillotine 3.681
47 Fortress 3.640
48 Ride of Valkyries 3.534
49 Ground Zero 3.427
50 New Sniper Ridge 3.329
51 Gladiator 3.303
52 Roadrunner 3.281
53 Sin Pioneer Period 3.144
54 Aztec 3.094
55 Andromeda 3.085
56 Reverse Temple 3.083
57 Detonation F 2.984
58 God's Garden 2.932
59 Neo Electric Circuit 2.927
60 Neo Arkanoid 2.775
61 Desperado 2.725
62 Empire of the Sun 2.680
63 Lost Temple 2.498
64 Hunters 2.201
65 Arizona 2.196
66 Baekmagoji 2.184
67 Sin Gaema Gowon 2.141
68 Wuthering Heights 2.109
69 Icarus 1.977
70 Holy World 1.942
71 Judgment Day 1.923
72 Xeno Sky 1.893
73 The Eye 1.824
74 Neo Harmony 1.815
75 Jade 1.814
76 Othello 1.781
77 Raid Assault 1.761
78 Neo Forbidden Zone 1.744
79 Martian Cross 1.744
80 Parallel Lines 3 1.732
Let me know what guys think of the outcome, whether you agree or disagree I will post the algorithm I used, how I went about deriving it, an explanation, and so on - tomorrow.
Maps that were not played since 2005 were not considered for the reason that the game played a lot differently back then, and hence it's too far of a stretch to imply their current balance from such ancient performance (also the year multiplier decreases quite significantly once you go back far enough, so none of them would be near the top).
A score of zero is only achievable if one of the 6 MU's has not been played a single time, as you get further down the list, there's a bit more uncertainty in the numbers, as one game can be the difference between a 67% win rate and a 50% winrate, so if you see something very unpopular somewhere along the line, keep that in mind.
Lastly (for now), what I want to mention is that if there were two different versions of a map that were reasonably balanced (Medusa is a good example), I used an algorithm to combine their rankings into the more popular one (adequately compensated with diminishing returns), and the less popular version was omitted - the aim was to only have one version of each map in the ranking.
Interest fact #1: Interestingly, Acro is the only map that has a 50-50 winrate in all non-mirror match-ups, but due to not having all mirrors occur on the map, it receives a score of zero.
Interest fact #2: Bluestorm receives the award as the most balanced map, for having 50.4% 49.5% and 46.9% win rates in the 3 match-ups, having a very balanced mirror match-up distribution, hosting over 900 games, and being featured in 27 korean tournaments, including many recent ones (relative speaking)
Interesting fact #3: Lost temple has been featured in over 100 tournaments (102), by far and away more than any other maps, even still, it was only able to achieve rank 63, just one higher over everyone's favorite Racewars and FFA maps, Hunters.
Interesting fact #4: Hunters is the only competitive non-two, three, or four player map used since 2005, you'd have to go back to Christmas eve of 2004 to find the last used 5 player map,Evolution Predators 2 (as well as it's two predecessors beforehand), and back to early 2002 for either of Deep Purple or Winter Conquest, as the only two 6 player competitive BW maps (which also happened to be the first map that Grrrr... won in the first OSL finals). There has thus far been no professional BW 7 player map.
Hope someone found this interesting, helpful, fun, or whatever 
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From what I've read and heard from progamers, Blue Storm is known as a heavily T favored map in both matchups. Python seems to be lower than what I expected and Nostalgia is definitely too high just because how imbalanced it is TvZ. Not having gas at the natural basically made it impossible for zergs to win. Rush hour also seems really low.
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Oh hell yeah. My fav map hits #9 and my second favorite map hits #1. What is up fellas?
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United States10183 Posts
Blue Storm was definitely imbalanced, Tau Cross also. FS has been showing it's balance problems.
Imo, circuit breakers is probs the most balanced map right now.
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On October 07 2016 16:46 FlaShFTW wrote:
Blue Storm was definitely imbalanced, Tau Cross also. FS has been showing it's balance problems.
Imo, circuit breakers is probs the most balanced map right now.
I'm really curious as to what the imbalances are. Apparently Blue Storm is Terran favored. What about Tau Cross and Fighting Spirit? Also I was under the impression Circuit Breakers was quite Zerg favored.
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Interesting to hear this from you guys, as it's what the numbers say, and not my opinion.
You're right that there's some things that are almost impossible to consider, such as:
1) If one player of one race is way better than anyone else, it can skew the results, for example Flash might make the map look fairly balanced even though it's zerg favored.
2) An imbalance might have been newly found, and it was pulled out of the map pool before it could properly reflect in the results
3) This doesn't take into account the "fun level" of any of the maps.
4) And if you want to go there, match fixing either.
5) Oh, and the last big assumption was that an equal number games were played by all races, it'd be too difficult to figure out exactly how many games were played in what time frame to normalize the data like that, especially since I collected my information by going through map profiles, and not having a comprehensive match list. Hence it doesn't take into account the era of protoss, the era of zerg, etc.
When I performed this I was quite happy with the results, as a lot of what I expected lined-up where in reasonable places (I'm not one to intentionally fudge data for something like this). Honestly, I personally would agree that FS, Circuit Breaker, Bluestorm, and Tau Cross are the most balanced maps in pro BW, in no particular order.
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The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
Blue Storm was always broken, even though an interesting map. The problem was mostly the late game because of it's nature, map splitting was very easy and the latest expos were hard to assault. T>P>Z for late game. For midgame I think it was quite balanced.
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in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige.
Fighting spirit is really hard vs turtly zergs.
Blue storm is somewhat balanced in PvZ, but kinda hard to play mid-late game PvT.
Tau Cross is really really good for protoss.
and i feel like Circuit Breaker is not that good for PvZ, even tho i haven't played it that much as the others.
+ Show Spoiler +
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On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler +
I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured).
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On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts.
Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure.
On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured).
Destination was fine for the races that mattered.
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On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured).
Desti was not that good vs terran if terran player exploited the bridges, but it was really good for recalls and reaver play, also protoss has a lot of space to reposition his army vs mech, which can buy a lot of time to find opennings or weak spots for counter attacks or good flanks.
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On October 07 2016 16:57 SCC-Faust wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 16:46 FlaShFTW wrote:
Blue Storm was definitely imbalanced, Tau Cross also. FS has been showing it's balance problems.
Imo, circuit breakers is probs the most balanced map right now. I'm really curious as to what the imbalances are. Apparently Blue Storm is Terran favored. What about Tau Cross and Fighting Spirit? Also I was under the impression Circuit Breakers was quite Zerg favored.
Tau Cross was generally considered well balanced considering that it's a 3 person map purely because of how open it was. No tight choke points to make it terran favored in TvP and relatively easy for zergs to get 3 gas. This led to 200 vs 200 macro wars which weren't terribly exciting. FS I consider a balanced map but very vanilla.
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On October 07 2016 17:42 r33k wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts. Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure. Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured). Destination was fine for the races that mattered.
And my model takes that into account, and treats 2010-2012 as the most important time. Otherwise maps like LT would be way higher up.
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On October 07 2016 17:56 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:42 r33k wrote:On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts. Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure. On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured). Destination was fine for the races that mattered. And my model takes that into account, and treats 2010-2012 as the most important time. Otherwise maps like LT would be way higher up.
The meta shifted compared to 2012
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On October 07 2016 18:07 duke91 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 17:56 FiWiFaKi wrote:On October 07 2016 17:42 r33k wrote:On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts. Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure. On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured). Destination was fine for the races that mattered. And my model takes that into account, and treats 2010-2012 as the most important time. Otherwise maps like LT would be way higher up. The meta shifted compared to 2012
But 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of BW, the time it was played at the highest level.
Of course it's difficult to treat the data (and some things that data cannot quantify), and I made the most reasonable assumptions I could to arrive at answers.
I'm not here to argue whether x map is #6 or #7, but mostly as a general guideline of how the maps stack up. Particularly at the very very top and the very very bottom, there can be some issues, since as you get down a lot, your uncertainty goes up due to small sample sizes, and as you reach the top, the difference between a 51% winrate and a 52% winrate becomes very significant (the perfectly balanced map results wise, as well as even mirror match up distribution would results in a map score of infinity).
edit: I could in theory compile the list for amateur broodwar as well, it's just there fewer maps (60?~), with far smaller sample sizes (minus CB and FS). Straight up, going through the game list, it seems like 2/3rds of the games are playing on FS or Circuit Breaker. It's the difference between 35k games, and 6.6k games.
edit2: Also, my bad FS and CB "only" take up 40% of games combined, though from scanning through the list, it appears that percentage has been far higher in 2015 and 2016.
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On October 07 2016 18:12 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 18:07 duke91 wrote:On October 07 2016 17:56 FiWiFaKi wrote:On October 07 2016 17:42 r33k wrote:On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts. Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure. On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured). Destination was fine for the races that mattered. And my model takes that into account, and treats 2010-2012 as the most important time. Otherwise maps like LT would be way higher up. The meta shifted compared to 2012 But 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of BW, the time it was played at the highest level. Of course it's difficult to treat the data (and some things that data cannot quantify), and I made the most reasonable assumptions I could to arrive at answers. I'm not here to argue whether x map is #6 or #7, but mostly as a general guideline of how the maps stack up. Particularly at the very very top and the very very bottom, there can be some issues, since as you get down a lot, your uncertainty goes up due to small sample sizes, and as you reach the top, the difference between a 51% winrate and a 52% winrate becomes very significant (the perfectly balanced map results wise, as well as even mirror match up distribution would results in a map score of infinity).
The pinnacle probably started before 2010. Irrc I would at least include 2009 as well.
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On October 07 2016 18:27 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2016 18:12 FiWiFaKi wrote:On October 07 2016 18:07 duke91 wrote:On October 07 2016 17:56 FiWiFaKi wrote:On October 07 2016 17:42 r33k wrote:On October 07 2016 17:26 Miragee wrote:
The problem with balance is that the meta-game shifted and still shifts a lot in BW. New maps help to adjust to imbalances due to metagame shifts. On the other hand, some maps that were quite balanced for a while are now imbalanced because the meta changed. Fighting Spirit is a good example. In it's heydays it was probably the most balanced map ever with less than 3 % deviation from 50 % winrate in all matchups. However, in this era of BW it shows some problems, although some of the problem might be caused by the lack of enough strong zerg players.
And in reverse, reimplementing some maps after a series of meta shifts might lead to different and possibly better balanced resluts. Also I really wouldn't lump anything pre-2008 with modern BW. The game as it was played before doesn't even compare. If we want to be more precise 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of the game, as post-KeSPA BW shows the lack of organization and practice infrastructure. On October 07 2016 17:38 Miragee wrote:On October 07 2016 17:32 XenOsky- wrote:in my opinion as a protoss player, i think the most balanced maps were Destination and Heartbreak rdige. + Show Spoiler + I thought protoss players hated Destination in both match ups. I personally liked both of those maps but Destination certainly seemed to be a bit imbalanced, at least in TvP (terran favoured). Destination was fine for the races that mattered. And my model takes that into account, and treats 2010-2012 as the most important time. Otherwise maps like LT would be way higher up. The meta shifted compared to 2012 But 2010-2012 was the pinnacle of BW, the time it was played at the highest level. Of course it's difficult to treat the data (and some things that data cannot quantify), and I made the most reasonable assumptions I could to arrive at answers. I'm not here to argue whether x map is #6 or #7, but mostly as a general guideline of how the maps stack up. Particularly at the very very top and the very very bottom, there can be some issues, since as you get down a lot, your uncertainty goes up due to small sample sizes, and as you reach the top, the difference between a 51% winrate and a 52% winrate becomes very significant (the perfectly balanced map results wise, as well as even mirror match up distribution would results in a map score of infinity). The pinnacle probably started before 2010. Irrc I would at least include 2009 as well.
This will make a lot of controversy, but the coefficients I used were:
2012: 1
2011: 1
2010: 1
2009: 0.95
2008: 0.9
2007: 0.85
2006: 0.8
2005: 0.7
2004: 0.55
2003: 0.4
2002: 0.2
2001: 0.1
2000: 0.05
After this number multiplied the previous terms, it was also square rooted, so the difference isn't as large as it appears. I took the year for the map when the map was in its prime. Anyway, I think it's reasonable, and no, I will not change it S:
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On October 07 2016 16:04 FiWiFaKi wrote:
44 Outsider 3.713
48 Ride of Valkyries 3.534
67 Sin Gaema Gowon 2.141
69 Icarus 1.977
78 Neo Forbidden Zone 1.744
All of my favorite Maps hardly suck in this ranking  (
Beside that, I find it hard to believe that" Enter the Dragon" and "Ragnarok" werent played since 2005?! I loved those Maps as well, allthough Ragnarok wasnt balanced at all...!
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Ragnarok had a rating of zero, 2 mirror MU never played, and its win rates were god awful
Enter the Dragon 2004 1.402 .... In 110th place, once combining any duplicate maps that came before it, it's probably around 90th~. At that point all the maps were so shitty or so hardly played, I didn't think adding them in would add anything meaningful.
Just look at maps like Battle Royal... 0 TvT 71 ZvZ 1PvP, these maps don't even deserve a mention.
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75 Jade 1.814
poses a lot of questions to the ranking. A very well balanced map is far at the end of the ranking.
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EPT
